Sunday, January 31, 2016

This was a soap I absolutely fell in love with, from the scent to the colors to the performance from the loaf ends I washed my hands with before leaving home. Ah, I'm really regretting leaving a lot of the soap I made to my family. I'm selfish and want it all back, dangit! LOL

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Scent Description: Sweet vanilla sugar cookie with a slightly roasted marshmallow background and a hint of caramel/winter green blend/spearmint leaf.
Sweet mints with a bit of a kick from that spearmint. Quite delicious.

Date Received: 12-17-15

Weight Melted: 1.0 oz

Location of Warmer: Living Room

Cold Sniff: 4/5 Quite a lovely blend of vanillas and mints. The mint wasn't too powerful and the vanilla tapered everything down to a nice, slightly energizing scent.

Warm Sniff: 4/5 There were no surprises while melting this

Scent Strength: 1.5/3

Scent Throw: 3/3 This filled the entire living room and most of the bedroom. I didn't quite expect this to extend to the bedroom, and I was glad that I melted this in the morning so the scent wasn't there when I went to bed.

Melting Power: 4/5 I got about 7.5 hours out of this before the scent died off.

Repurchase: Yes! I've even melted the other half of the tart already with the knowledge that I have a few minty blends coming to me whenever SMT finishes up this first round of orders.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Scent Description: Sun-sweetened, delicious dark raspberries warmed with a dash of sweet and creamy vanilla. A B&BW type duplication.
Pretty cut and cry fragrance. I took this way back in the States because I wasn't sure I would be able to review this melt before I left. Turns out I not only never melted it, but Mom sent it to me in one of the packages. LOL. So here goes!

Weight Melted: 1.4 oz

Location of Warmer: Office

Cold Sniff: 4/5 I'm a big black raspberry and vanilla fan.

Warm Sniff:2/5 I don't know how to describe what happened to this poor tart. It took on a sickly sweet but fake note, like lipgloss or chapstick. A lot of my berry type scents have been doing this. It's really a bummer!

Melting Power: 2/5 I let this go for about 3 hours before deciding that there was nothing I could do for the wax and tossed it.

Repurchase: Probably not. I think I could have gotten better scent performance if I had melted less wax, but it was still horrifying enough that I don't think I'll be picking up this scent any time soon.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Today was a pretty relaxing day. I went on a little run to get some
steps in (I have to beat everyone at our Fitbit challenge, don't you
know?) and spent the day laying with Michael and watching some YouTube. We had a really confusing
morning. I woke up thinking that he had work tonight and he believed me
when I asked him what he was going to do before his shift tonight. Half
way through the day he asks me what day it is and checks his schedule
and exclaims "I HAVE TODAY OFF!" and we both got incredibly confused. I
guess yesterday was so jam packed we forgot that he actually worked
through yesterday morning. Yay discombobulation.

One thing I forgot to mention in my post yesterday was my belated Christmas. Mom sent me part of my Lush sale order, some things I wasn't able to pack in my bags, and my presents from my grandparents. I also got a box from Julie! She was very generous with her gifts and it blew me away. She's an evil enabler and I'm currently going back and forth on buying a $70 perfume from Solstice Scents. On top of what I'm already eyeballing from Sonoma Scent Studio. You're killing me, girl!

Anyways, I said I would take pictures of the nail care stuff I got and share them so let's get going, shall we?

Scent Description: Strawberries/Raspberries, cranberries and iced champagne.
This was an instant love. Awwwmigoodness. Sweet blend of berries and just a hint of fizzy champagne. Think berry sweet, not sugar sweet, and you've pretty much got this blend.

Date Poured: 12-16-15

Weight Melted: 1.5 oz

Location of Warmer: Office

Cold Sniff: 5/5

Warm Sniff: 5/5? This is where the wax gets interesting. It was strong. Strong beyond belief. Anywhere that wasn't in the immediate office area was a lovely strawberry/blonde moment blend. If you got anywhere within 5 feet of the warmer, however, there was a choking, fake note to everything. I felt like I was inhaling a cheap strawberry scented chapstick or lipgloss. I was banished from my own office due to this melt!

Scent Strength: 3/3 This puppy was strong!!

Scent Throw: 1,000,000/3 Okay, maybe not quite that dramatic, but this filled the entire house and then some. The throw and strength together was ridiculous! I'm not going to be able to melt that much next time!

Melting Power: 5/5 I got about 16 hours from this half chunk before the scent had died down enough for me to turn the warmer off.

Repurchase: Yes! I definitely will melt a smaller amount of wax to prevent that choking note from clogging up the area immediately around the warmer, but this was a fantastic, youthfully sweet blend that I quite enjoyed. If, however, when I melt the second half of this chunk in smaller amounts I find that I cannot get rid of that chokingly fake note, I will pass.

Guess who went out to Yongsan today? And remembered to bring their fancy shmancy camera?! THIS GAL!!
Not only that, but I took pictures! How many, you ask? 80. I'm not even
kidding. I decided that I didn't care how many looks I got and how
tourist-ey I looked (I mean, I am a tourist, so what's that
matter?!) and went full picture-taking mode! Except for the stores that
we ended up buying stuff in, because I'm easily sidetracked like that.

Before I get on to what we did today, however, there are some minor updates that need to be done from the 20th-24th.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Scent Description: Apricot nectar, mimosa petals & Tuscan cypress/Butter cookies with blackberry jam filling/Crunchy waffle ice cream cones swirled with vanilla sugar.
Twilight woods is as strong as that fragrance can be, drizzled over a bed of sweet bakery goodness. I was a bit skeptical when reading the scents in this - Twilight Woods doesn't go with bakery! - but I feel like the TW bumped up the sophistication level. Instead of a super sweet blackberry cookies type scent we get a pleasant grown up version of a classic bakery staple every blackberry jam/bakery lover seems to have in their stash.

Date Poured: 12-11-15

Weight Melted: 1.1 oz, then 1.7 oz

Location of Warmer: Living room (1.1 oz), then office (1.7 oz)

Cold Sniff: 3.5/5 I wasn't sure how each scent would play out when melted and the scent seemed to morph every time I took a whiff.

Warm Sniff: 4/5 Sadly, the twilight woods really died down once this melted, just as Julie feared it would. I could smell it but it wasn't as noticeable as it had been on cold sniff. On my first melt I got a generic crunchy scent, and that's all I can say bout it. The second melt was closer to my description here.

Scent Strength: 1/3

Scent Throw: 1/3 (Living room, first melt), 3/3 (Office, 2nd melt)

Melting Power: 1/5 (1.5 hours first melt), 4/5 (7.5 hours, 2nd melt)

Okay, before I do a repurchase blurb you probably have a few questions. Why did I get such a drastic performance difference? Part of it might have to do with the type of warmer I used (hot plate on first try versus bulb on second). I'm pretty sure the bigger factor was another tart I had been melting. L3's Strawberry Blonde blend, which I will be posting about tomorrow. That sucker drowned out everything. I can't be sure that my first melt was accurate at all because SB was everywhere and so, so strong. After I realized this I turned off the first melt and waited for another day to melt the scent again. I'm glad I did, because I got much better performance!

Repurchase: Yes! Even though the final scent strength and proportions didn't pan out the way I hoped it would each note is definitely there and this is a very pleasant, lighthearted scent that I wouldn't mind assaulting any guests' noses with :) However, never melt this if you have another, stronger scent going. This gets drowned out very easily.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Another soap with some titanium dioxide dragging in the final, cut product, but I'm still a huge fan of how it turned out. So is my sister, if her reaction when I dragged her over to check out the soap is any indication.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

I haven't done much worth posting about. We've done some more cleaning and I got a chance to play some video games with my family. My sleep has been better and yet worse. I know the value of having a constant sleep schedule. I don't thing it works for me, though. I've been waiting until I feel absolutely exhausted to lay down and I manage to fall asleep almost immediately. I don't toss and turn as much. I also don't typically get as much sleep and I'll have some troubles waking up, but once I work through that morning grogginess I have a lot more energy throughout the day.

The above picture is another screenshot from that Ark: Survival Evolved game I talk quite a bit about. I tried out a different map for the first time in 1800 hours of playing and I'm absolutely in love. It's so much bigger than the main map for the game and each biome is distinct in its aesthetics and the creatures that can be found. I would not be able to play this map at all on my old computer set up. Ah, I'm such a peach about my new computer set up.

Cold Sniff: 3.5/5 The lemon was just strong enough to make me worry that this blend would turn into another fizzy lemon curd scent.

Warm Sniff: 3/5 PBN was definitely the strongest note here. I was rather disappointed in that. I wanted to get the same scent I caught when sniffing at the cold wax. The lemon ended up falling completely off of the scent and as I'm not quite sure what marshmallow peepers is I can't say whether it was there or not.

Scent Strength: 1.5/3

Scent Throw: 2.5/3 This didn't quite fill the entire kitchen/dining area, but it extended through the entire office and hallway.

Melting Power: 4/5 I got about 7.5 hours before I turned off the tart for the night.

Repurchase: No. If I want what this ended up smelling like I will melt Peggy's Blueberry Noel by itself. Good thing I picked up some at the most recent SMT opening! :)

Sunday, January 17, 2016

This was one of the last soaps I made after finding out that I was getting ready to leave for Korea. I really, really enjoyed how this soap turned out except for some initial difficulties after the soap hardened up.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Scent Description:"SMT Blend."/"SMT Blend."/Sweet, thick, creamy vanilla with confectioners sugar sweet cherry, sweet orange citrus and the tiniest amount of yummy fresh coconut.
Ah, the endless pleasures of vendors not having scent descriptions. I know a lot of vendors don't bother with describing what seems like a typical scent blend, but I feel like that's more laziness than anything else.

Date Received: 12-17-15

Weight Melted: 1.8 oz.

Location of Warmer: Office

Cold Sniff: 3/5. I don't particularly like serendipity, but I don't dislike it either. I'm neutral leaning towards ambivalent distaste. Does that even make sense? There was a hint of sweet marshmallow here.

Warm Sniff: 3.5/5 Whoa. Talk about a weird melt. The very first thing I picked up on was that buttery fudge scent. That stayed for a good 30 minutes before the serendipity creeped in and took over. I could still pick out a vanilla marshmallow type scent but I had to really strain for it.

Scent Strength: 1.5/3

Scent Throw: 2.5/3 This filled most of the office, hallway, and kitchen/dining area.

Melting Power: 3/5 I only let this go for about five hours before calling it quits.

Repurchase: Probably not. I'm not the largest fan of serendipity unless it's blended well with other scents and this particular time the other scents didn't stand a chance against serendipity. A serendipity lover would love this blend, though!

Speaking of Sniff My Tarts, they should have had their opening a few hours ago! Did you partake in the waxy madness?

Friday, January 15, 2016

Uh... today wasn't supposed to be as long or busy as it ended up being. We needed to go into Yongsan for some paperwork that needed to be filled and Michael's day off correlated with two of his friends, so we all got together and explored. There were three main places we went to: a new to us multi building mall of sorts, Itaewon, and the mall by Yongsan that we always go to.

Scent Description: Vanilla Ice Cream/ripe and tart blackberries with base notes of vanilla and fresh greenery/Fresh,zesty lemons, warm vanilla extract, a hint of sugar blended with fresh cream.
This is heavy on the blackberry jam with the ice cream softening up the lemon curd just enough to take off that fizzy note lemons like to have.

Date Received: 12-17-15

Weight Melted: 1.4 oz

Location of Warmer: Office

Cold Sniff: 4/5 I was antsy about how the lemon curd would perform when melted, but hopes were high when sniffing this.

Warm Sniff: 4/5 The blackberry jam didn't quite perform how I expected it to, but this melt was nonetheless awesome. I first got a very authentic cake batter scent while the wax was starting to melt. As it hit that lemon curd it released a very light lemony scent, finally releasing a little bit of that blackberry jam at the end and staying a pleasant lemon-blackberry-cake scent until I poured out the wax.

Scent Strength: 1/3

Scent Throw: 3/3 This filled all of the office, hallway, and kitchen/dining area.

Melting Power: 4/5 I got right around 8 hours of scent from this before the scent died off.

Repurchase: I'm going to go with a yes! I liked how this scent ended up smelling and it performed quite well!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

No, this is not a real picture. It's a video game! I know, video games are kind of leaking into what was supposed to be a separate blog, but I guess that's to be expected if I do an (almost) daily diary series. So sorry ahead of time to those of you who have no interest in computer/techie/gaming things. This will be a rather technical post once I get around to what I did on the 13th.

Warm Sniff: 5/5 No true surprises from what I remember. The blueberry wasn't overly strong and the bakery aspect was not a zucchini variety bread, so I'm very happy.

Scent Strength: 1.5/3 This wasn't quite light but I wouldn't quantify it as a medium scent.

Scent Throw: 2.5/3 It filled more than half of the area I expected it to, but didn't quite completely fill both rooms. For the office area, I expect tarts to fill the entire office, hallway, and kitchen/dining area.

Melting Power: 5/5 I got 9 hours before I couldn't smell the scent any longer.

Repurchase: Yes! I'm very much a fan of this, which is kind of surprising to me. When I was first sniffing this out of the box I remember thinking that I could see why people liked it, but it wasn't amazing or anything. Whether it was curing or time or my nose getting a break/reset in moving overseas I suddenly found myself liking this blend a lot more and noticing all the little nuances that make it such an awesome scent. If I make an order at the customs opening this Friday/early Saturday for me, I will definitely be buying this in larger quantities!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

New year, new place, new warmers (that last one is in the works but I'm getting there!) so what better time to revamp my wax rating system than now! Okay, I say revamp but I really mean make slight adjustments to what I already use and modify rating systems to accommodate for my current wax expectations and the house layout. The extra page that I keep on the side of the blog has been updated as well to reflect these changes, as well as include some new sections so readers can see all of the rating systems I've used in the past.
Anyways, on to the new(ish) rating system!Scent Description: If possible, this will include the vendor's scent description of the product. Then I will include my own thoughts on the scent.

Date Poured/Received: This will only include the pour date if it's available. If that's not available, it will include the day I received the wax. I've decided to include this for those who are curious, and for my own records. I'm not quite sure how I stand on the whole 'curing' thing. It can't hurt to have this info, though. :)

Weight Melted: In ounces.

Location of Warmer: Since I'm upgrading to two or three warmers in the house I figured the location would be a nice thing to document. There will be four possible locations: Office, Guest Room, Living Room, Bedroom.

Warm Sniff: 1-5. Again, anything 3 or higher means I at least liked the scent. I will also document any differences between the cold scent and warmed here.

Scent Strength: 1-3. How strong is this scent? Is it a background, light scent? An in-your-face scent? Or is it somewhere in between? Getting a 1 isn't necessarily bad; it just means the scent wasn't very heavy on the nose.

Scent Throw: 1-3. I'm easing up on my tart throw requirements because I'm expanding the number of warmers I use. My expectations are affected by the room the warmer is in.1/3 Means that this tart was horrible. There was no throw. At no point over the course of melting did I smell the scent anywhere but with my face on top of the warmer.2/3 Is a decent throw. It didn't completely fill the area I expected it to fill, but it got most of the job done.3/3 Is perfect throw. This scent extended exactly as far as I wanted it to, filling the equivalent of two rooms.
>3/3 Means that this scent extended beyond where I expected it to.

Melting Power: 1-5 How long did the scent last while melting? I'm bringing down the range in hours that I expect from my tarts, as I'm really big on switching out my scents frequently. Variety, people!
0-2 hours is 1, 2-4 hours is 2, 4-6 hours is 3, 6-8 hours is 4, and anything over 8 hours is a 5. I'm aiming for a five in this category for expectations, but more often than not I will switch out the scent before I get to that point.

After each category has been rated I will do a little blurb on whether I would repurchase this tart/wax or not.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Guess whose several day training period was postponed until the beginning of February? Michael's! Yaaaay! That means he got today off! That also means today's post will end up being a bit of a novella (without the fiction) complete with crappy phone pictures. I'm sorry, I forgot my fancy shmancy camera at home! I was so upset with myself because I remembered it right as we got on the highway, making it rather difficult to turn around and go back home. Guess you'll have to settle for cell pics!

If you've been following my posts for a while, you know I got this beauty about a week ago. Now that I've had time to unpack a little and clean up I can in good conscience work on this post without feeling like I'm putting off the real world.

This was a large mystery lot that I picked up from Jennifer when she had posted several on her website. I actually ordered directly from Jennifer using Facebook and PayPal because her website had some issues taking APO addresses and I also wanted to make sure that she was willing to go through the extra steps to ship the package. Jennifer was very sweet and accommodating through the whole process. I paid on late December 19th and she shipped the package out on December 22nd. When it arrived does not matter as that is not the vendor's duty to hand deliver the product, and packages sent overseas take a while. I got here well before the package did, so I was able to open it up and see everything when it got here!

Sunday, January 10, 2016

I know, I'm turning into a foodie blog with all of my food pictures. I wanted something to put here as I'm not a fan of text-only posts, so sue me. :P

Today Michael and I went into town with the intention of checking out a large grocer's market that might have lye, only to find out after we'd arrived that Sundays are not good days to go out shopping. A lot of places shut down for the day. Oopsie!

Besides that, I spent a lot of time napping and a little bit of unpacking. Not a lot. I've been lazy, I know.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

I don't have much to report from the past three days, and nothing of note will happen for the rest of today so I'm roping it in with this post as well. I'm also not quite sure how posting will go for the next week or so since it will be a lot of the same stuff.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Welcome to the revamped version of Order of the Odor. We've reorganized and are expanding our monthly topics beyond just all things smelly. We hope you visit each member's blog to see their contribution each month, and we hope you participate too by leaving your own answers in the comments.

To kick off a new year and a new group effort, we asked . . .

What vendor (wax or anything) are you MOST excited to order from this year?

Oh man, so many things to choose from. I think mine would have to be the Sonoma Scent Studio. They've been on my radar since Julie was kind enough to send me a sample of her favorite scent from Sonoma early last year. Since then I've teetered on the edge of placing an order and delving into the world of fragrance and perfume. This year I aim to finally make that first purchase!

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

I'm finally typing this from the comfort of my desktop computer. I enjoyed certain things about the laptop, but this just feels like home.
Today was a rather boring day in terms of activities I can really blog about. Our household goods arrived mostly intact. In fact, the only thing we saw that was majorly damaged was my filing cabinet. The top is smushed down enough that the top drawer can no longer close, rendering the locking mechanism useless. Besides that and a minor tear in the couch that isn't worth making a fuss over everything was in great condition.

Mom wanted a picture of the other jewelry boxes, so I decided to share.

Yesterday ended up being a very lazy day for me. Michael went for a bike ride in the late morning and I pretty much stayed on the computer all day. I did work on some posts and I'm getting ready to switch over the blog to Seoul's timezone, so if dates and times look off that's why. I wish the blog would retain local posting times and not entirely switch everything when I change the timezone. All previously posted holiday stuff will now look like I've posted it the day after. Oh well. Anything that is tied to a specific date will have the actual posting date somewhere in the title (take all of Blogmas for example) so it shouldn't be too confusing if anybody goes back and reads the blog.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

While Michael was in Korea and I was stuck in the states I found myself pretty constantly checking the waxy world Facebook Groups. This vacation has found me very much back in the loop for products and vendors and openings. I'm not quite sure if this is a good or bad thing. Eh, I'll figure that out at a later date.

One of the things I was always available for were the lots Amy kept posting. There were several posts that she put up that I had plenty of time to pick up but ultimately decided against. One morning I finally pulled the trigger. The scents all sounded good to me or at least were something I was willing to try so I figured why not? Let's take a look!

Friday, January 1, 2016

I did nothing of note yesterday besides some cleaning and lots of nap taking. Michael got home midmorning and crashed for about six hours so I spent my time putting about in the living room. By the time he woke up we had just enough time to eat and watch a movie together before I ended up crashing and he had to leave for his shift. I woke up at two again and was going to work on some posts that I've been wanting to do... only to find that Michael had taken the laptop in to work because it was New Year's Eve/Day and they got to play some video games because of it. It was mildly infuriating (how dare he ruin my schedule?! LOL) but I could have made do with his desktop setup and worked on the text part of my posts, then added the pictures later once he got home. My point is, it's been so long that it is over half way into the next day before I've even had a chance to sit down and write about yesterday. Already I don't like having to switch everything to past tense and say yesterday. I want to write about my day at the end of it, not the next day!!
Since I've pretty much summed up all activities of note for the day I wanted to take some time and vent out one very particular frustration I have had with this whole move.